SONY Hack: Skip Gates Covered Up Ben Affleck’s Slaveholding Roots

Apr 20, 2015

RUSH: Oh, yeah, I’m all over that Sony hack. You know what else about that Sony hack?

You know what’s been discovered about the Sony hack?

I should tell you this.

Henry Louis Gates, known as “Skip” Gates to his friends. Remember, he’s the guy that was arrested by a police officer when he was locked out of his own home and trying to get into it in Cambridge and it was that incident that led President Obama to refer to the stupid cop, which led to the beer summit outside the White House. Skip Gates and the cop and Obama met for a beer summit to try to put back everything all together and reunite people, to get rid of the bad vibes and so forth.

So I get an e-mail, and I had forgotten this. I never even got back to Cal Thomas on this. That’s how remiss I am. I got an e-mail from Cal Thomas must be… Well, I still have it. I should find it. Two months ago. He’s telling me about this program that Skip Gates has on PBS and that he suggested me to Skip Gates for it, and he said that Skip said, “You think Rush would do it? We’d love to have him!

“I would never even think to ask. I would never think Rush would say yes to this.” Skip has a program where if you volunteer to go on it, they do a genealogical trace (which you can do at Ancestry.com). They go back and they find your family tree. They find your roots and all that sort of stuff, and they tell you and the audience watching who and what and where you came from. (interruption) Who’s supposed to do what? (interruption) Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. They’re supposed to tell you everything.

You know, when I read Cal Thomas’ e-mail, it was during a busy time, and I marked it to look at it later, and it’s still in the “to look at later” mailbox. I didn’t go back to it. What reminded me of it was the Sony hack, interestingly enough. So I’m sure that Cal thinks that because I didn’t answer it that the answer was “no,” and he passed that answer to Skip Gates. I’m not saying I would do it now, by the way. That’s not the point. The point is that Ben Affleck did it.

The well-known Hollywood playwright, screenwriter, actor, Ben Affleck — the new upcoming Batman — did it. He went on the Skip Gates. I forget the name of the program. Anyway, we now know via the Sony hack, which has been put up on WikiLeaks, that Skip Gates found slavery in Ben Affleck’s family, that Ben Affleck’s family had owned slaves, and Ben Affleck lobbied Skip Gates to leave that out in the show. So Skip Gates got hold of Michael Lynton, who is the CEO of Sony.

As an interesting side light, Michael Lynton is married to the sister of Jonathan Alter, the reporter for Newsweek. That’s a connection to some of this. So Skip Gates gets hold of Lynton and says, “Look, look, Affleck is asking us to leave this out, but the integrity of the show is at stake here, and everybody goes into it agreeing that whatever is uncovered will be reported.” He’s asking Lynton’s advice since Lynton, the CEO of Sony, deals with Affleck, “What would be the best way to go about this?”

“Lynton proposes two solutions. You either just leave it out with the full knowledge it’s gonna get discovered someday and you’d better have an answer for it, or put it in there and deal with it and treat it for what it is.” Lynton said, “I don’t want to know what you’re gonna do. Do what you want.” Skip Gates, I’m sure because of intense lobbying from Affleck and his camp, left it out. The program that aired featuring Affleck left out the fact that he’s got slave owners in his family tree way back.

So Lynton was right: “You can leave it out with the full knowledge it’s gonna get discovered at some point.” It was discovered by Lynton in a hack of his e-mails. And Gates’ explanation was that it had to do with journalistic integrity and editorial decisions that were made with the big picture in mind. So he offered… I forget the excuse, or the reason. It’s mentioned in the leak, I just forget what it was. But he made a journalistic decision to leave out that fact of Affleck’s past.

When I read that, that’s when I remembered Cal Thomas had sent me a note asking if I would be interested on the show, ’cause it was Cal who suggested it to Gates. (interruption) Yeah… (interruption) Yeah, Anderson Cooper left his in. Anderson Cooper’s family, the Vanderbilts, also had slaves. (interruption) What? (interruption) And Ken Burns. Ken Burns, the Civil War documentary maker for PBS.

His family had slaves, and those guys left it in. It was not edited out of their episodes. But Affleck’s family history was omitted, that aspect. And I remembered… That’s when I remembered Cal Thomas had asked me if I would be interested in sitting for this and doing the show. And when I read the Sony leak, I said, “I wonder if something like that would have been uncovered about me, and if I had asked it to be left out, I wonder if it would have been.”

And the answer is, “No F-ing way, dude,” would be it omitted. In fact, that would probably be the lead.

My grandfather did an in-depth genealogical trace of our family a long time ago. In fact, I remember when I was working at the Kansas City Royals, we had a special day for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a group day, the Mormon church in the area, and they presented a gift to George Brett, which was just a beautifully bound family trace. The Mormon church has one of the best genealogical libraries in the country.

I remember Harmon Killebrew came in to present it to Brett and they gave it to me to give it to him. It was so beautiful I didn’t want to give it up. It wasn’t even about me, it was just so well done and it traced Brett all the way back to his family roots in what is now the United Kingdom, Great Britain. It was fascinating, just fascinating stuff. And my grandfather has done the same thing. We came from Germany, actual town called Limbach, via North Carolina. That’s where our family came into the country, way back when and then ended up settling in the agriculture areas of southeastern Missouri. It’s much more detailed than that.

I don’t know what else Skip Gates would find, but we’ve done the trace. But, yeah, the Sony hack. But, you know, I’m all over that. That’s how this all got started. The Sony people have directors and producers that are conducting fundraisers for the Democrat National Committee all over the place. The summary of the Sony leak by Julian Assange makes clear that this company, Sony, is inexorably tied to the Democrat Party.

There’s an e-mail from J.J. Abrams doing a fundraiser for some such thing, and it’s all about what a rotten SOB I am, and that’s why they had to go to the J.J. Abrams fundraiser, and that’s why they had to give money, because I was out there, not in Hollywood, just on the radio. And I’m all over it, in that regard. Now, obviously, J.J. Abrams didn’t write the fundraiser. It came right from the DNC. It looks just like one of those mass e-mails that you get if you’re a member of any of those websites. But he had to read it before he put his name to it, no doubt. So, anyway, that’s that, with a few diversions.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Skip Gates’ show on PBS is called Finding Your Roots, and this is the reason he gave for excluding the tidbit about Ben Affleck, that there was ownership of slaves in his family’s past. He said, “Ultimately, I maintain editorial control on all of my projects and, with my producers, decide what will make for the most compelling program. In the case of Mr. Affleck — we focused on what we felt were the most interesting aspects of his ancestry — including a Revolutionary War ancestor, a 3rd great-grandfather who was an occult enthusiast, and his mother who marched for Civil Rights during the Freedom Summer of 1964.”

Okay. So that would probably overshadow the fact whatever slavery ownership there was in Affleck — well, editorially, in the editorial determination, since Affleck’s mother had marched in Selma, that probably overcame whatever baggage there would have been with slavery ownership in the past.